When you’re feeling a bit down, or bored, do you ever grab yourself a treat as a little pick-me-up? If you said yes, then you’re engaging in emotional eating. Have you ever wondered how you began this habit? It’s actually something you may have learned before you could even speak...
Do you want your baby to grow up with a love of veggies, adventurous and
confident to try new foods and be able to moderate their own appetite to
avoid overeating? It might sound like a dream, but you have the opportunity
to do just this. When you introduce healthy foods the right way, and at the right time, your little one can learn to enjoy a variety of healthy flavors and develop a healthy respect with all foods.
From a tiny newborn to a determined 1-year-old, the first 12 months of baby’s life are a time of incredible growth and development. Giving them a well-balanced diet will help aid this period of growth.
In baby’s first year, they spend much of their time exploring and learning about the world around them using their five senses—touch, sight, taste, smell, and hearing. Parents can use environmental stimuli, such as mealtimes, to accelerate the development of each sense to near maturity several months after birth.
What is it that sets some children on a poor eating path rather than a healthy one? Why do some children eat their veggies and ask for fruit as snacks, rather than highly-processed foods? While it can feel to parents like their child was born that way, the truth is far more complex. And well within their control.
Like talking and walking, acquiring a love healthy food is something baby learns. How can you get your child to choose peppers over pizza?
As parents, we all want to do what's best for our babies, infants, and children. So, it can be more than a little concerning with the news that our family's youngest members could be at risk from the very thing meant to nurture us all – food.
4 months of age signals the start of an exciting window of opportunity, that if taken advantage of has the ability to not only transform your parenting journey (and family mealtimes) going forward, but more importantly, your child’s health and wellness potentials for life. 4 months marks the important opportunity to start ‘Flavour Training’!
In the medical community, there's a clear consensus on when infants should begin complementary feeding: at 6 months old. But despite the AAP, ACOG, AAFP and WHO recommendations being very clear about this timeline, parents often start much earlier.
The primary reason that official guidelines push for this 6 month mark is that very early introduction of complementary foods has been shown to reduce breastfeeding's overall duration. The medical community also holds concerns that introducing solids prior to the age of 6 months could increase the risk of choking and aspiration, lead to diarrhea and poor gut health and contribute to the onset of certain chronic diseases later in life, including diabetes and celiac disease.
So why is there so much confusion over this?
Starting solids poses such a challenge because we’re not only trying to sort through all of the available information and opinions on the topic, but also fit a brand new feeding and food preparation routine into our already busy lives. And, in the hustle to get this done, we often forget the most important element of introducing our children to food: Helping them foster a healthy relationship with food for life.